I have been looking after a boy since he was 4 months old, he is now 5 and very small for his age, he could pass for a 3 year old. He also has speech problems, it's very hard to understand him when he speaks. He gets colds a lot, his immune system is not the best. He is otherwise very smart and perfect in any other way.
It only occured to me recently that these seem to be the issues of a hiv+ child and I freaked out!
I've always been careful, more than I have to be to be honest, but you never know...
The parents don't know about my condition and I would like to keep it that way. They are an older couple. The mother was 46 when she gave birth and the father was 60...that's 5 years ago.
Baby barely got proper nutrition and sleep since the mum is a super busy lady and never quite got into the whole baby routine of child's needs. To this day his nutrition is pretty bad, since he won't eat what he doesn't know and sleeping is never a full night of quality rest.
I always contributed his delays and meeting the growing milestones to that.

I would like to adopt hiv+ child one day so I looked up into the health issues of such children and that's when I got the shock of my life when pretty much all the issues listed were the ones this little boy I help look after has.
I cannot think of any blood related accidents I could have exposed him to..apart from one that I cannot remember clearly... When he was a baby, we were reading a book and one of us got a paper cut, but I can't remember if him or me...all I know that if it was me, my first reaction would be to check him and run to get a band aid.
If it was me, would there be a chance for him to get hiv? He would need to have a cut too, correct?

I'm so worried about this I can barely sleep...

What are the chances of transmission and legal issues if he did get it??

Thank you

Response from Dr. Wohl

There is no way you could have given this child HIV through casual contact. Paper cuts do NOT transmit anything.

Given what you write it looks like there are other explanations for his problems.

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